On Saturday 26 September, while the All Blacks were flattening France (37-17) in the Rugby World Cup at Eden Park, the New Zealand government geeks were in the server rooms, upgrading machines hosting crucial government business sites.
Unlike the All Blacks, the government geek team scored not just an own goal, but completely …

COMMENTS

As a somewhat surprised Kiwi

This comes as no surprise..

Many friends of mine, and I myself, have experienced the "skills" of various government departments. Even those that should be "Experts" in their field are seriously lacking in basic IT skills let alone significant abilities. Sadly, for those involved, what should've been a quick and easy experience has led to years or hell for a number of people, all because people in IT in certain government fail at IT.

Throw in what is basically an Australian company, and, well, I guess you're asking for trouble! :)

/mandatory_kiwi_slag_ozzie

Am very pleasantly surprised that there is enough knowledge involved for them to be using Debian, but then that's probably because someone told the relevant government party that it was "free".

I would very much like to be shot of the current government, but this isn't quite as an effective way as I'd like.

(Why am I surprised? Well, I finally signed up for El Reg so I could comment and, well, I'm the first person to grab this nick!)

This story is not correct

This story gives the wrong impression. While TelstraClear does host the affected sites, the outage is nothing to do with TelstraClear or the hosting. In fact, we have offered the assistance of our experts if that would help speed the resolution.